Being British: What's Wrong With It?

By Peter Whittle

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics look set to make 2012 as successful as the royal weddings of 2011 when it comes to creating a surge of patriotism across our once self-assured land. But despite the latest wave of nostalgic British pride, Britain is in the midst of an identity crisis, with British values and identity the butt of scorn and sneers. Motivated by the sense that the notion of Britishness has been hijacked, and intrigued by the ever-vexed question of British identity and what it really means, Peter Whittle has set out to examine what's actually wrong with being British. With his trademark wit and insight, Whittle explores how, despite being chipped away at from all sides for the past five decades, pride in being British has shown an amazing ability to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Release date: Jun 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781849544313

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE BRITISH PATIENT

So, how do you feel? Do you think there’s something wrong with being British? Or do you feel that you should think there’s something wrong about being British? And, even if the answer to those questions is No, do you sometimes sense that there are quite a few people out there – in the paper, on the TV and radio – who certainly think there is quite definitely something wrong with it, and want to make damn sure you realise it too?

In 2012 – the year of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – it would be virtually impossible, despite all the celebrating around these national events, to answer No to all these questions. We all live in the same atmosphere, and after a couple of decades of national soul-searching, academic debates around the very meaning of what constitutes Britishness, and the occasional opportunistic intrusion from Westminster politicians, ours is a culture suffused with doubt, self-loathing and a fear for the future – if we can bring ourselves to think about the future at all. Contrary to what economists may believe, gloom and pessimism are not states of mind brought about just by financial crises – they can just as easily be the product of an acute cultural malaise. And Britain’s has been about as acute as it can get.

Angry? Sad? Frustrated?

This shows itself in countless ways all around us every day, although every so often a small seemingly insignificant incident brings it home to you. While standing in a queue at a bookshop in central London recently, I overheard a conversation between the two sales assistants. Both in their early twenties, they’d obviously been discussing some social or political point (it was in the History section).

‘Anyway,’ said the first with a smirk by way of wrapping up, ‘what has Britain ever given the world? Oh yeah, concentration camps.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed his colleague with a snort of derision.

My turn was next. I felt saddened for a moment, and then a sort of anger welled up inside me. But I said nothing. I glared at them a bit, although in contemporary Britain that once effective way of registering annoyance no longer really works. So I rationalised: the conversation hadn’t been meant for me or the other people waiting, so I had little right to stick my oar in.

But that wasn’t really the reason I kept quiet. I knew it would have appeared odd for me to take issue with what they’d been saying. I would have come across to them, and the other customers, like some sort of eccentric: what Private Eye used to call ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’.

Besides which, these two, I’m sure, would have simply assumed those around them would agree with them, or at least wouldn’t be bothered either way; they hadn’t after all felt remotely inhibited about airing their views in front of us. So they would have been utterly taken aback, astonished, if I’d challenged them – if I’d started to drone on about parliamentary democracy, the industrial revolution, the rule of law, football, Shakespeare or the fact that Britain virtually shaped the world they were living in. They would have been astonished, either because they simply wouldn’t have known what I was talking about, or if they did, that I should assume these were achievements to be proud of. They would have thought me some kind of ghastly reactionary nationalist, a bigot no doubt, maybe even a fascist.

But their exchange is par for the course in many circles. Self-loathing – for that is what this is – now runs through British culture to such an extent that we no longer even see it for what it is. For many, it has come to be the natural way of looking at the world. We have become used to living in a permanent state of cultural cringe which harms our society’s very ability to move forward.

Being self-effacing about our achievements, reticent about our way of life, and not ‘banging our own drum’ when it came to national pride was once considered not just fitting, but one of the very characteristics which defined Britishness. As has been said by politicians from both parties during one of our recent spasms of argument about national identity, we do not ‘do’ flags in the front garden like our brash, vulgar American cousins. This is not what we’re about, and goes against the very essence of Britishness. In its gentleness, the old approach was indeed quite attractive, even if it did rely on an implicit sense of imperial superiority. But if it still exists – and it does in the minds of, say, romantic old-fashioned Tories – the simple hiding of our national light under a bushel is quite different from the outright self-abnegation which in reality now characterises so many parts of our national life.

Dome and gloom

Two events in post-war Britain illustrate all too well how much things changed within the space of half a century. The Festival of Britain in 1951 was celebrated in a mood of relief for the end of the war, but also with an optimism about the future. Centred on London’s South Bank, it took place in a country which still had a strong sense of itself and its achievements. The new Royal Festival Hall and the space-age symbolism of the Skylon displayed a cultural confidence which, while maybe not matching the wonders of the 1851 Great Exhibition, still proclaimed a sense of national purpose and identity. Britain might have been utterly exhausted, but it was exhausted in the knowledge that it had been victorious in a war which had brought its finest hour, during a battle which was to be viewed ever-after as a righteous one. Despite the terrible toll that the war had taken on the country and its economy, as a national celebration, the Festival could still take place in an atmosphere of remarkable social cohesion.

Furthermore, many of the people celebrating at that time would still have considered their nationality to be an intrinsic part of their very own characters. This is something which many of us, now living in the long shadows cast by the baby-boomer era, the me-generation and the counterculture of the 1960s, might find hard to understand. But the survivors of the war still took for granted the idea that somehow they were not simply their own individual inventions, but were also intrinsically formed by the nation of which they were a part. Its history was their history, its troubles their troubles. Their responses were also partly informed by a belief, taken for granted, in a set of national characteristics. I saw this in my own parents, both of whom had been teenagers at the time of the Festival. Throughout their lives – and they were both strongly individual people – they continued to explain a feeling here and an action there in collective, national terms: such and such wasn’t ‘the kind of thing we go in for here’, or that was ‘not really our cup of tea’. They knew who they were.

Now cut to half a century later. Britain again prepares to mount a popular, national celebration, this time to mark the millennium. It comes during a period when New Labour are attempting to ‘rebrand’ the country as a dynamic, creative powerhouse of modernity. The government, embarrassed and impatient not just with our past but with the remaining institutions that symbolise it, fatuously pronounces that we are in fact a ‘young’ country. It is Year Zero for Britain. So the celebration takes the shape of the super-new, super-expensive Millennium Dome. Unfortunately, because it is conceived by people who seem to have lost all confidence in Britain as well as their own personal sense of being part of it, it inevitably proves a dismal, demoralising failure.

Nobody can decide what should be in it. What it should not be seems to preoccupy organisers far more than anything more affirmative or celebratory. Marooned outside central London, in the shadow of Canary Wharf and far away from where the crowds are actually gathering to see in the next thousand years, it is full of banal and sometimes unintentionally funny compromises. At the party held there on the eve of the new epoch, an uneasy Sovereign and a hyped-up Prime Minister link hands to sing Auld Lang Syne with all the awkwardness of a first date. Unlike the 1951 festival, or even more so the 1851 Great Exhibition, the Dome manages, with its ‘zones’ and supposedly visitor-friendly attractions, to both patronise and condescend in its attempts to be accessible and popular. As a result, the people stay away in their millions. In its afterlife, and roughly a billion pounds later, the Dome manages finally to find fame as a popular – if windswept – venue for rock gigs.

What happened during those fifty years? When exactly did we become so sheepish, so tentative, so inhibited? When did British culture change from one which had a basic pride in itself, a pride which could be taken for granted, into one in which a seemingly endless apology, even an outright repudiation of everything about ourselves and our story, was dominant? And why?

The aim of this book is to attempt to answer these vital questions. In the following chapters, we will explore the ways in which we got to where we are now, and how we ended up in what, in modern parlance, might be called a Bad Place. But we will not just be backward-looking; it is not the intention of this exercise to simply offer up a lament. We will examine the options and in doing so, try to come to a prognosis. Is the British patient on life support, as the more pessimistic amongst us believe? Has it lost all belief in itself? Is it, moreover, on some kind of suicide mission, happy to let itself waste away?

Or is it simply that for too long the wrong people have been in charge of its wellbeing? Is there underneath it all a basically strong constitution which, even if glimpsed from time to time, remains largely hidden from day to day? And if it wants to survive and flourish in the future, what are the best courses of action it can take?

Should we, indeed, be cautiously optimistic?

A self-harming nation

The popular feeling that Britain seems determined to rubbish itself is not the result of some kind of mass hallucination. There has certainly been a sustained cultural onslaught over the past forty years, one which has left Britain not just at sea about its very identity, but at a loss as to its own history, its ‘back story’ as screenwriters call it. Its institutions have been either trashed or called into question, its habits and traditions traduced. None of this has been done, however, via the ballot box, or as the result of popular demand from the grassroots.

Britain’s post-war economic history, its slow withdrawal from first-class status as a world power, and the remarkably rapid dismantling of its former Empire would combine to have a huge effect on national confidence. Britain, of which it was famously said in the 1950s, had ‘lost an empire and has yet to find a role’. But this in itself does need lead inevitably and naturally to the self-loathing and self-abnegation which dominates our culture now. It is perfectly possible to be in diminished circumstances, and yet still have pride, still be comfortable in one’s own skin, still know, in essence, who one is.

Similarly the acts and omissions of decades of politicians might cause one to despair, and even feel shame at policies carried out in the country’s name. But being ashamed of one’s government is quite distinct from being ashamed of one’s country, and shouldn’t be confused. Unless, of course, one actively wants to be ashamed of one’s country – in which case, governments will provide ample opportunities.

Rather, it is those who set the tone of our national life, those who shape the cultural landscape, who have had a powerful hand in making the country unrecognisable to those who were born and formed here, and unknowable to those who come here now. They have done a wonderful job of it.

When one starts talking variously about the metropolitan liberal elite, the political/media class, the chattering classes and so forth, it’s not uncommon for a glazed, bored look to come into the eyes of others. The terms seem nebulous and abstract. But as we shall see later the importance of what would once have been called ‘the great and the good’ when it comes to Britain’s self-image cannot be underestimated. It largely sets the agenda.

There is a ‘trickle-down’ effect here. The elite’s worldview determines what is considered acceptable and what is undesirable. It sets the terms of debate under which everybody else has to operate. This is not to say that there is anything sinister going on here; this is not some kind of weird conspiracy. It is simply to state that there tends to be a remarkable convergence of beliefs and views amongst this group. And for anybody who questions its existence the recent referendum on whether Britain should adopt the AV system for future elections provided fascinating evidence. The result, which provided a massive win for the No campaign, also showed that of just ten areas to return a ‘Yes’ were Islington and Camden in London as well as Oxford, Cambridge and central Edinburgh. Here for all to see were the habitats of the metropolitan liberal elites, the members of the self-styled ‘progressive alliance’.

An anorexic nation

If one of the causes of anorexia is a chronic lack of self-esteem, or possibly a desire to make oneself disappear altogether, then there is a case for saying that Britain has become an anorexic country. The symptoms of this condition are all around us. One can look around at random and up they will pop.

So, for example: a perusal of the broadsheet ‘quality’ press and its resident commentators at any one time will reveal a steady flow of casually derogatory and snobbish remarks and observations about Britain and the British, ranging from their past historical achievements down to their eating habits.

On television, one can watch a documentary which aims to show that there is nothing intrinsically British about anybody living in these islands, that we are just a mishmash, and that we are not who we might think we are. Switch channels, and one can hear a liberal former newspaper editor on a programme supposedly celebrating Britishness, citing, in a model of negative reasoning, our acceptance of other cultures as the chief reason she is proud to be British.

Or take the world of the arts: a long-dead playwright, once celebrated for his depiction of innately British characters and subject matter, undergoes a mild, somewhat knowing critical reappraisal only after decades of being reviled and mocked for the very same thing. This is reflected in many ordinary, social conversations, where reticence, restraint, pragmatism, a belief that our institutions were probably the best in an imperfect world, a wariness of new-fangled ideologies – things that once went towards defining British culture – can now only be referred to ironically, with a set of silent quote marks around them. One is encouraged to find them funny at best, completely destructive at worst. Or simply mythical: George Orwell might have written of the essential gentleness of our national character and hence culture but now it appears that we want to disown that gentleness – indeed, we are all too ready to be convinced that it never really existed.

Or turn to the political sphere, if you can bear to: a front-bench Labour politician proclaims that Britain is only the country it is because of immigration (and therefore without it we would be nothing; the wince-inducing insult in the comment appeared lost on her). While on a trip to Pakistan, the Prime Minister ensures that the cult of political apology for our past sins as a nation, whether real or imagined, remains a feature of modern diplomacy. A Chancellor of the Exchequer, who will one day bleat about the need for a national ‘conversation’ on British identity, presides over the quiet removal of Britannia from the coinage.

And finally: official statistics reveal that a record number of people are leaving Britain, while a new survey confirms that many more would join them if they could afford it.

To say that examples such as these have a drip-drip effect on national morale must surely